Intellectual Formation
Intellectual Formation
The academic component of the formation programme is designed to be in two phases: The Philosophicum which will run for the first 4 academic years; and the Theologicum, which will run for the second four years, with the Pastoral Year constituting the first of the second four years. The course content of the philosophicum that we have at St. Albert the Great Seminary is broad-based, boasting of a selection of humanistic, natural and social sciences as well as linguistic disciplines. To facilitate this, the Seminary applied for an affiliation to the University of Benin, Benin City. The senate of the University approved this application on September 23, 2015. With this, this phase of study will culminate in the award of a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Philosophy by the University. This programme is bifunctional. It takes cognisance of the needs of priestly formation while at the same time provides for the requirements for the award of a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy. In drawing up this programme, efforts were made to make it relevant to the needs of our time and context. To this end, courses like History and Culture of Nigerian Peoples, History of West African Peoples and Nations, Philosophy of Values, among others, were delineated and incorporated. Plans have also been made for the comprehensive training of our seminarians in the various aspects of Information and Communications Technology to keep them abreast of modern means of acquiring and disseminating information.
The Library
The place of a good library in modern educational pursuit cannot be over emphasized. In view of this, the young Seminary has a standard structure that is equipped with state of the art shelves, reading tables and seats for use as a library. Since sourcing physical text is a long term project in our clime, we have devoted considerable amount of effort to developing the E-component of the library. To this end, we have acquired a central server to network a minimum of 20 computer terminals within the library to provide inter/intranet services within the library complex. To make this functional, a power inverter has been installed to ensure regular power supply to the network. Besides this, efforts are on to provide an equipped computer centre within the lecture area. The location is already chosen and wired for internet and intranet access and currently awaiting furnishing and installation of computer units.
The goal is to have an integrated system that would provide access to online materials when needed, granting access to the stock of digital texts that we are building and access to other E-libraries to which we have subscribed.
Lecture Schedule
Lectures run from 8.30am till 12.45pm Mondays to Saturdays with the exception of Wednesday which are lecture-free days. Each lecture lasts 50 minutes. Tutorials, group work and seminar presentations are scheduled for the afternoon hours between 3.00 and 4.30pm. Seminarians are encouraged to take maximum advantage of times allotted for lectures and to apply themselves diligently in writing their assignments and fulfilling all the obligations deriving from the various courses they are taught. The teaching method adopted is explorative and didactic, creating incentive for further research by students, while all the time being sufficiently systematic and comprehensive. Examinations, written or oral, are conducted at the end of each semester.
